Exciting Features For GNOME 2.22, 2.24

The GNOME team is out with the road-map for GNOME 2.22, 2.24, and future releases. There's quite a few changes planned, but a few in particular had caught our attention.

One of the updated applications in GNOME 2.22 is Ekiga 3.0. The Ekiga VoIP client will introduce a new user interface as well as supporting X-Video and IAX2. Epiphany, the GNOME web browser, will also switch to using a WebKit back-end. For those that enjoy MythTV, the Totem Video Player will feature a plug-in for MythTV as well as introducing full DVB support and better support for text subtitling.

Tomboy, for note taking, will introducing new automatic/background synchronization, tasks inside notes, and note tagging. The Metacity Window Manager will also introduce multi-screen full screening support. Other features include performance improvements for the Deskbar Applet, Evince migration to glo/gvfs, Exchange 2007 and Google Calendar support for Evolution GroupWare, new GNOME Control Center features, GDM redesigns, and time zone support in the clock applet. There are also artwork improvements for GNOME 2.22 that include removing the LargePrint icon theme, more HighContrast icons, etc.

GNOME 2.22 is planned for release in March of 2008, but coming out later in the year will be GNOME 2.24. Planned for GNOME 2.24 is better GNOME panel theming, integration of bookmarks and browsing history for GNOME-wide access, and new applet library for GNOME panel. Even further down the GNOME 2.x pipeline is optical character recognition support for Evince and eye-candy additions to the GNOME Panel. More details are available on the GNOME Live Wiki.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the web-site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience and being the largest web-site devoted to Linux hardware reviews, particularly for products relevant to Linux gamers and enthusiasts but also commonly reviewing servers/workstations and embedded Linux devices. Michael has written more than 10,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics hardware drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated testing software. He can be followed via Twitter and Google+ or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.